Suburban Bushlands

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English: King Lear

Subtitles: 月と影の遠近法 / The Perspective of Moon and Shadow

Year: 1990, 1991, 2014

Writer: William Shakespeare

Translation: Shouyou Tsubouchi

Libretto: Ei Takatori

Locations:

  1. Tokyo Global Theatre, Shinjuku(1990,1991)
  2. Mermaid Theatre, London(1991)
  3. St. Stephens Theatre, Cardiff(1991)
  4. The Other Place at Straftord-upon-Avon(1991)
  5. Za Koenji (2014)

Releases

Lyrics

Note: I've only listened to the CD reprint. So I don't have a good comparison to tie tracks easily to lyrics from the original page

Opinion

I was relistening the album as I was making this page(03/03/26), I always found this album and the Hamlet cassette, to be a weird intermediary stage of J.A. Seazer music. If you've listend to his later works(Post-90s and especially
after he resumed the use of live music in the late 2000s), he was leaning towards a Neoclassical sounds, Barbara Dwarf Starchild and Alchemistic Girl are easy to find example of this. Prior to this, you had the Tenjo Sajiki house
style, a mix of Hard Rock, Proto-Metal, Psychedelia, and Cinematic stylings in his film music and some of his theater music, evoking Nino Rota. And after Terayama's Death, J.A. Seazer leaned increasingly towards sequenced music
and his personal taste, reflecting a Post New-Wave underground rock scene. RX5s/TR-707s, tasteful use of mid 80s-early 90s digital synths, minimalist arrangements/songwriting, and etc.

The King Lear soundtrack, is probably the first case, where Neoclassical Influence, came to the forefront. To musically accompany this Avent-Garde retelling of Shakespear's Play. And I'm not too sure about it in this case.
the CD version is bloated with stingers and others cues from performance, which does not make a it a interesting listen like other cassette or cd releases from this period. Which were abridged in some way or the other,
to suit the 60-90 minute cassette length. But for what it is, it's a interesting capture of a transitionary period for J.A. Seazer and especially Universal Gravitation, as they were seriously starting to resume international performances.
So for that, I can atleast appreciate some of instrumentals, and the vocal songs in general.

If you are interested in understanding the performance, give Shakespeare's King Lear a read for context, and also take a look at the below archive of flyers.


Click here, to return to lyrics page

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